Raingarden

Raingarden

I ordered two flats of natural plants from the Twin Cities chapter of Wild Ones that will arrive after I leave for Washington for the summer, so on Monday two members of the chapter are coming over for lunch in the garden (pray for sun!) and a planning session on the plantings.  Mary Schommer will plant my plants after I leave, and a young lawyer staying at my place this summer while I’m gone will water them

While I’m civic-minded about water conservation and pollution, I must admit I’m most attracted to the native plants because they more or less take care of themselves after the first year.  An inch of rainwater will keep them happy for a long time without help from my hose or water bill.  Wow! (And Whew! And WooHoo!) 

At the recent MetroBlooms workshop, they showed pictures of attractive native plants with roots as deep as 13 feet.  My grasses’ roots are more like three inches.  No wonder Lorrie Otto (see below) was against grass.  Here’s what the World Wildlife Federation published about her disdain:

“HERE’S A QUIZ: What four-letter noun is a “sheared, poisoned, monotonous, sterile landscape,” created by human acts that are “immoral,” “evil” and “flagrantly wasteful of drinking water and our non-renewable resources?” Hint: You won’t find that definition in the dictionary. Those are descriptions offered over the years by naturalist Lorrie Otto, godmother of the movement known as natural landscaping. And the answer lies in that patch of green that Americans spend more than $25 billion a year to create and maintain: the lawn.”